The Hottest Jobs of 2016

Thinking about changing jobs in the New Year? With unemployment at a post-recession low of 5%, job hunters’ prospects are brighter than they’ve been in a long time.

Some skills are so scarce that candidates can expect to have their pick of offers, according to a study from CareerBuilders and its data-analytics arm, EMSI. The research compared job postings with the number of hires in each of the past 12 months and pinpointed the biggest, and most persistent, gaps.

No. 1 on the list: Nursing, with almost 200,000 unfilled openings. Software and app developers came in a distant second. Around 84,000 of those open posts go unfilled in any given month.

Here’s CareerBuilder’s ranking of the 10 fields where demand is greatest, with median hourly pay for each:

Registered nurses $32.04

Software/app developers $45.92

Marketing managers $61.12

Sales managers $53.20

Health services managers $44.62

Network administrators $36.44

Industrial engineers $39.18

Computer systems analysts $39.76

Web developers $30.52

Financial managers $55.44

Not all the hottest jobs in 2016 will call for a four-year degree. Among those that don’t, by far the biggest unmet demand is for drivers of heavy and tractor-trailer trucks, a separate CareerBuilder list shows. Over the past 12 months, employers have been unable to fill almost a million (984,669) truck driving jobs, suggesting that the current median hourly wage of $19.00 might soon be headed higher.

Looking for a job? Truckers are getting huge bonuses

Shipping companies have had to change the way they conduct business in order to deal with a labor shortage, which has been good news for truck drivers who are now receiving better salaries and perks, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Average pay for truck drivers has risen 17% since 2013, reaching a current record high of $57,000, while U.S. wages overall have risen by less than 4% over the same period. Truckers are also receiving $5,000 sign on bonuses, and amenities such as satellite televisions to make life a bit more comfortable while they’re on the road.

The long-haul trucking industry currently employs about 800,000 workers, and it needs about 48,000 more according to the article. As the unemployment rate declines and other options are created, this career path looks less and less desirable. Trucking fleets are left fighting for the same workers, forcing them to hike paychecks and sweeten the deal with some perks.

U.S. Xpress Inc. was one of the first fleets to significantly increase pay when it started having trouble filling its hiring quota, a move that was matched by competitors. COO Eric Fuller says that it will inevitably have to raise pay again. These extra expenses are pushed on to customers — retailers, grocers, and other shippers — who now have to pay higher prices.

Some companies, such as Whirlpool WHR, are reducing their reliance on drivers by opening up distribution centers near railroads.

“I’m in an industry,” says Phil McRimmon, “That I will never hurt for a job.”

McRimmon’s been a trucker, mostly long-haul, for the more than twenty years since he retired from the Army. He currently drives routes that take him far from his home in Granbury, Texas. He loves the freedom of the job, the sense of making his own decisions day in and day out.

He’s also, in many ways, the face of the trucking industry’s labor problem.

The American Trucking Association claims that there’s a current shortage of between 35,000 and 40,000 truck drivers nationwide. Trucking companies report lots full of idle trucks and ready cargo, but not enough drivers to move them. The operator Con-Way recently blamed the driver shortage for declining volumes and profits.

With trucks moving nearly 70% of all U.S. inland freight according to the ATA, the driver shortage could have a nationwide impact on consumer prices as labor costs rise.

The ATA estimates that continued economic expansion could demand the addition of as many 100,000 drivers a year to keep up with demand. The ATA’s chief economist, Bob Costello, has said that the driver shortage is likely to get worse before it gets better. To deal with the driver shortage, trucking companies are focusing resources on retaining labor.

The most obvious option for attracting more drivers is money. “Pay’s going up substantially, because it has to,” says Andy Ahern, CEO of trucking consultancy Ahern and Associates. Ahern cites companies including Celadon, CRST, Boyd Brothers, CR England, and U.S. Express as recently increasing driver pay. From an average paycheck of $40,360 as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in2012, he ventures that freight drivers are now averaging a bit over $50,000 a year.

In trucking, short labor drives wages higher very directly, as drivers can easily jump ship from one carrier to another. And turnover rates for long-haul truckers are truly staggering—96% in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to the ATA. The rate for local truckers is a much lower 10%, but that still dwarfs the national turnover rate across all industries, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics put at 3.5% in March.

McRimmonillustrates this dynamic. He’s been working his current contract, delivering empty cargo containers, for less than a year. Before that, he drove refrigerated cargo, but he says the new gig pays better and puts less strain on his truck—though he says he hasn’t noticed broader pay increases, perhaps reflecting significant geographic discrepancies in driver pay.

Wages are only the start of the industry’s labor challenges. McRimmon owns his big rig, just like about 350,000 other owner-operators nationwide, as counted by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. According to Ahern, truck prices have ballooned in the past five years thanks to mandated environmental and monitoring technologies, and financing for aspiring owner-operators is hard to come by.

Deeper problems with recruiting are reflected in trucking’s aging workforce. The average age of truckers is currently 49, compared to 42 for the labor force as a whole. McRimmon is 63, and says he plans to retire within five years.

Despite trucking’s status asone of the increasingly scarce middle-class careers open tothose without a college degree, efforts to recruit younger drivers may be hampered by negative public perception, increasingly strict oversight and regulation, and limited opportunities for advancement.

McRimmon has encountered plenty of disdain for his profession, and the idea that to be a truck driver, it takes “the intelligence of a monkey.” But as he points out, trucking actually requires detailed attention to scheduling, routes, and fuel efficiency—and to a raft of regulations that strictly control drivers’ time on the road and rest breaks.

Pete Dannecker, director of fleet safety for Pennsylvania-based A. Duie Pyle, speculates that the predictability of a career in trucking may be a turn-off in a culture that worships innovators. “Everybody knows who Bill Gates is, everybody knows who Steve Jobs is,” he observes. “But quick, name four great truckers. It’s not a glamorous business . . . and there’s not a great chance to make the million.” Pyle has worked to counter that sense of limited opportunity by recruiting two-thirds of management from within, while supporting new drivers during their training.

The one clear solution to the labor shortage is years away, though advancing steadily: automated trucks. They’re already operating on closed sites like Rio Tinto’s Pilbara mine in Australia, and Daimler AG has just received approval to test automated highway driving in Nevada. But however badly the trucking industry may need it right now, automation is at least a decade away. The trucking industry will need to find another solution in the interim.